Owners of giant pumpkins espouse four ingredients for success in the world of competitive pumpkin growing: good seed, good soil, good weather and good luck.

Pretty it ain't but at 1,000 pounds Glen Huffman's pumpkin has plenty of heft, which is all that matters to the teen from Ameliasburg. He's entering it in a weigh-off at the Prince Edward County Pumpkinfest on Oct. 13.

By:Special to the StarCarola Vyhnak Published on Tue Sep 25 2012

AMELIASBURG, ONT.—It’s one ugly brute.

And that’s just fine with proud owner Glen Huffman, who points out that in the world of competitive pumpkin growing, magnitude trumps pulchritude.

The16-year-old from Ameliasburg, Ont., is hoping his 1,000-pound progeny has prize-winning potential in a weigh-off next month.

That’s where things really get ugly, though in a friendly sort of way. After months of battling drought, downpours, heat, disease, wild critters and garden pests, growers across the province are now pitting their pumpkins against each other.

Huffman is holding his breath that the powdery mildew attacking his vine leaves won’t wipe out his whopper before the Prince Edward County Pumpkinfest on Oct. 13.

“You form an emotional attachment to them,” he says of the months spent nurturing a baby behemoth. “For a lot of growers, it’s like your children. When someone’s pumpkin goes down, we all feel bad for them.”

He knows what that’s like. In July, disease claimed a specimen that was on track to reach 1,400 pounds, says the Grade 12 student, who got hooked on the “addicting hobby” when he joined the 4H Club six years ago. He raises his pumpkins in his uncle Jim Huffman’s garden where there’s a ready supply of water to quench their 125-gallons-a-day thirst.

Growers espouse four ingredients for success: good seed, good soil, good weather and good luck. To that end, John Nieuwenhoff is taking no chances with the biggest pumpkin he’s ever grown.

He wraps it in blankets and sleeping bags to keep it warm at night, blows fans on the stem to keep it dry and shelters the skin from the sun to prevent cracking.

“It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says of the 1,500-pounder in his Georgetown garden. “But the only thing I care about is the number on the scale.”

He’ll keep his fingers crossed during the “real scary time” when he loads the monster into his pickup truck for the Erin Fall Fair on Thanksgiving weekend.

“I’ve heard there are three guys coming all the way from Quebec. That probably means they have something bigger than mine,” frets Nieuwenhoff, a lawn-care company operator who’s written a beginner’s guide to growing giants.

The prizes in fall contests are no small potatoes. Port Elgin Pumpkinfest Ontario’s largest weigh-off, which happens this weekend (Sept. 29-30), pays out $5,000 for the heaviest.

Jim Bryson of Ormstown, Que., is known as the man to beat. The producer of last year’s world champion — a staggering 1,818.5 pounds — has turned supersizing into a time-consuming science. The semi-retired farmer spends up to 10 hours a day fertilizing, hand-watering, pruning, spraying, and worrying.

“It’s been a hard summer. They really don’t like it that hot,” he says. “Then the heat’s been followed by downpours and they suck up water so fast they can’t handle it.”

Splits and rot squashed hopes for five of his seven pumpkins, including one he thinks could have topped 2,000 pounds. But he’s got a 1,600-pounder that’s benefited from his not-so-secret weapon of diluted maple syrup.

Sprayed on the leaves three or four times a week, it provides added nutrition to the pumpkins’ normal diet of fish and seaweed, says Bryson, who’s weighing his chances of winning big in Port Elgin after hearing “rumours” about who’s got what in this growers’ poker game.

“There’s some pretty good ones out there,” he says.

Heft takes a back seat for John Vincent, a Picton resident who’s known for colour, the “fringe side” of the hobby. You can have size or sizzle but not both, he says, explaining fiery orange is in the genes.

Vincent, a certified crop adviser turned John Deere salesman has taken top honours in the comeliness category several times. That included “one of the most beautiful pumpkins ever grown,” he says modestly. “Orange, spherical, just gorgeous.”

He’s had success on the size side, too, tipping the scales at 1,339 pounds with his biggest.

“Just being able to grow something that big is fun,” says the producer of both beauty and beast.

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